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Incredible impact of bats on the economy
Bats do something for the economy? What? Many fruit and nectar eating bats are important pollinators. They're the nocturnal equivalent of the bee and pollinate over 450 types of food crops and 100 types of plants used in medicine. Some of those crops are ONLY pollinated by bats. No bats= no tequila, no avacados, no guavas, no papayas, no breadfruit, no cashews, no allspice, no shea butter, no figs, and yes, we will have no bananas! Insect eating bats provide pest control for many important crops. In the US alone, insect eating bats save $1 BILLION worth of crops from damage each year and reduce the amount of pesticide used. They also consume disease carrying insects, saving the US millions of dollars in health care costs. They can also be a major tourist draw. The congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas has a colony of 1.5 million freetail bats living underneath it. The city initially tried to get rid of the colony, but then discovered they were a huge tourist draw. How huge? Bat related tourism pours $8 million into the Austin economy each year as tourists come to see the bats take flight each evening. Over 1/4 of all the mammal species in the world are bats. Most species can live between 15-25 years in the wild. They are slow breeding, only having one pup per year that they raise in colonies. In large colonies, mother bats may even nurse the pups of other bats. Bat World is a charity that rehabilitates bats in the US. They have several different rehabilitation centers across the US. They operate a sanctuary for Mexican freetail bats in a historic building in Mineral Wells, Texas that serves as a roost for thousands of bats during their annual migration. They also rescue orphaned bat pups at the sanctuary colony, hand raise them, and then release them back into the wild. They also help train individual bat rehabilitators in their Bat World Bootcamp program where they get an intensive weeklong course on how to care for insectivorous bats. Visit the Bat World website to find lots of adorable (yes, ADORABLE) pictures of bats. How cute? One of their bats, Bootsana, has a Myspace page! She has more than 400 friends.
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Contributor's Note
I love bats. We have several little brown bats that roost nearby and on summer evenings I can watch them swooping over the pond in my yard hunting down mosquitoes.
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Bat World
| Bootsana the Bat's Myspace
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